[f. WASSAIL v. + -ER1.] One who takes part in riotous festivities; a reveller.
1634. Milton, Comus, 179. I should be loath To meet the rudenesse, and swill’d insolence Of such late Wassailers.
1794. Coleridge, Relig. Musings, 284. O pale-eyed form, The victim of seduction,… Who in loathed orgies with lewd wassailers Must gaily laugh, while [etc.].
1821. Byron, Sardanap., II. i. Sar. And you will join us at the banquet? Sal. Sire, Dispense with me—I am no wassailer.
1844. Disraeli, Coningsby, V. ii. A rather boisterous party of wassailers who had been celebrating at Buckhurst’s rooms the triumph of ‘Eton Statesmen.’
1882. Standard, 18 Feb., 5/2. Christopher North pictures the wassailer of the ‘Noctes Ambrosianæ’ as revelling in a plenitude of Pandores.
† b. One who takes part in Twelfth-night or Christmas-tide ‘wassailing.’ Obs.
1706. Phillips (ed. Kersey), Wassellers … such as in the Country go about from House to House, during the Festival of Christmas, and sing Catches for Drink or other small Boon.
1817. N. Drake, Shaks. & Times, I. vi. 130. The persons thus accompanying the Wassal bowl, especially those who danced and played, were called Wassailers.
1912. J. B. Partridge, in Folk-lore, XXIII. 455. Wassailers still go round at Randwick, Woodchester, [etc.]…, and probably many other villages [in Gloucestershire].
